Heading Towards the Civil War and Reconstruction

James Polk was the eleventh president of the United States and he was a democrat expansionist. Polk took part in the Oregon Treaty, which allowed the United States to acquire Oregon, Washington, and parts of Idaho, Wyoming, and Montana. Polk teased Mexico into attacking them, which led to the Mexican-American War. The North didn’t really go for the war since they thought the Slave Power, rich white Southerners, was “pulling the strings.” The gag rule raised suspicions move on the Slave Power. In the process, the Wilmot Proviso was defeated. The Wilmot Proviso prevented slavery into the new land gained from Mexico. The failure of the Proviso caused the formation of the Free-Soil Party. The Free-Soil Party was a single-issue party that was devoted to the Wilmot Proviso. The war ended with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which caused Mexico to hand over the Southwest. Stephen Douglas, a democrat, brought up the Compromise of 1850, which was defeated in Congress.  It ended the fugitive slave law, which required the North to report slaves. So they left slavery up to popular sovereignty. The personal liberty laws were brought up which allowed a fugitive a lawyer and a jury. After the Whig party had ended the uprising of the Republican Party emerged. Another party, the American party (the Know-Nothings) were nativist, people who hate foreigners. John Brown led the proslavery camp which ended up killing 5 people.. After that it got really intense and 200 people ended up dying, that was known as the Bloody Kansas. James Buchanan was the president of the United States in 1860. After that Abraham Lincoln came into the picture as the new republican star. Then Stephan Douglas destroyed his political career and that came to be known as the Freeport Doctrine. In December 1860, South Carolina seceded and after that, 7 other states followed and they were known as the Confederate States of America. Jefferson Davis was to lead the confederacy. Jefferson Davis imposed a military draft known as the conscription. This brought up the class tensions. The radical republicans wanted immediate emancipation which they introduced the confiscation acts. Then Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which liberated all slaves residing in those states still in rebellion. The people that were against the Civil War were called the Copperheads. The government established the Freedman’s Bureau to help out the new liberated blacks. In the Sherman’s March, the Union Army burned everything in its wake. Abraham Lincoln then proposed the Ten-Percent Plan, which required ten percent of voters to swear an allegiance to the Union. Then Lincoln enacted the Wade-Davis Bill, which required for the Confederate States to be ruled by a military governor. When Lincoln was assassinated, the southern democrat, Andrew Johnson, took over. Not long after, Johnson got impeached with the impeachment proceedings. Ulysses S. Grant then took over and proposed the Fifteenth Amendment, which required states to enfranchise black men. They still followed the “Johnsons Reconstruction Plan” which had all southerners swear a loyalty oath. All the new land that was left over, radicals proposed to give it to the freedmen’s and it was known as the “forty acres and a mule” While the Blacks tried to fit back into society, they preferred sharecropping as a profession. The only violent thing that was stopping the African Americans from prospering was the Ku Klux Klan, which murdered abolitionist and blacks.